Friday, October 09, 2009

Obama Wins Prize for Not Being George Bush

Actually, I'm not George Bush either, could I also get something for that?

For a serious discussion of the award, see this. For a list of the people who were passed over to give Obama the prize,look at this. [Later: The same blogger explains this list here.] I wrote on the weirdness of prize committees in general here.

8 comments:

Ann
said...

Oh. my. god. He actually could have come across as a stronger leader for a moment if he had given a speech expressing the importance of pursuing world peace, and that it shouldn't be taken lightly, therefor he must graciously decline the prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize has become a political joke long before Obama won it. (Arafat, Gore, IPCC).

I think it's embarrassing for him too. But either way, once Kissinger received his, it became clear that the prize was joke. Fucking Kissinger. They may as well give Dan Brown the Literature Prize. But I also wonder if it's too much really to ask for an objective award. How often do those actually occur? Maybe the Fields Medal. Scientists always brag about their objectivity but I would really need to be better informed about that process, and perhaps immersed into it, to discern whether or not that has its own politics.

As Ann points out, that prize has been a joke for a long time. Not only did they never give it to Gandhi, but shortly before he was murdered they declined to give one that year on the grounds that there was "no suitable living candidate" for the award. In 1938, they considered giving it to Hitler. The list of absurdities and weirdnesses is very long.

It's definitely European politics. In reality what does a group of Norweigens know about peace, science, literature etc. that other intelectuals in this country or any other are not qualified to judge. A Nobel Prize is the equivalent to an adult of a Juicy Coture pocketbook, Aeropostale blouse or Hollister Jeans to a teenage girl. Maybe Donald Trump putting his name on a building?

I actually think that is more or less the right attitude. More exactly: like top 10 lists, prizes are mainly good for a) entertainment value and b) sparking an interesting discussion. Since this years peace prize accomplished both goals in great abundance, I'm not all that upset about it.